


A Haus Ghost's Guide to Sobriety

by SummerFrost



Series: Academia [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Gen, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Sobriety, Struggles with Alcohol Abuse, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-08
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-15 14:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9240236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerFrost/pseuds/SummerFrost
Summary: Mandy and Jenny, like, totally got Kenny's back!





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the same universe as Infinity, Plus One--which is the first fic in my Academia series! Can technically be read as a stand-alone, but it contains significant spoilers for the main storyline, and will probably make _infinitely_ (pun very intended) sense if you've read that first.
> 
> This snapshot takes place during the November of Bitty's sophomore year. 
> 
> Thanks to shipped-goldstandard and ice-and-lights for the beta reads <3

Jenny scrunches up her face and puffs air at her bangs to try and blow them out of her face. She can see through them, because she’s like, selectively incorporeal and all. But it’s totally the principle.

Mandy is painting her nails. She curses under her breath when her hand slips and smears neon green polish over her finger and Holster’s gross three week-old bedsheets. It does that weird shimmery thing that everything does and disappears. Rad. Not that Holster would even notice, probs. He’s kinda a mess, really. They gave up on training him a long time ago, the same way they quit trying to get Shitty to wear pants.

The front door slams and both girls perk up with concern. Kenny is the only one who comes home this time of day and he doesn’t slam things unless he’s feeling  _ super  _ unchill. That’s one of the things they like about him; their Haus is falling apart as it is and they don’t need rude boys helping it on its way. Jenny figured out a while ago that if you float through someone and make them all shivery right after they slam a door or kick a cabinet shut, it like, totally conditions them to stop.

Jenny lets Kenny slam the doors sometimes. She thinks maybe it helps.

Mandy counts to thirty, but she doesn’t hear the sound of him creaking up the stairs. Kenny always kicks off his shoes and comes right up to his room to drop off his backpack. She frowns and floats up to the top bunk to share a  _ Look _ with Jenny, who nods and sinks through the bunk beds and the floor to look for him. Mandy follows.

They find him pacing in the kitchen with a cell to his ear. His shoes are still on his feet and his free hand is clenching the snapback he probably just ripped off his head.

“I don’t understand why you can’t do this for me,” he’s begging, and gosh, he sounds so sad it kinda breaks Jenny’s ghosty-heart. She looks over at Mandy and they rock-paper-scissors. Jenny wins and she floats over, turning incorporeal to hover through Kenny’s body so she can put her ear up to his phone. He shivers, like everyone always does. She whispers,  _ ‘Sorry,’  _ even though no one ever hears.

Well, except Johnson. But he’s gone now.

It’s his sister Izzy on the phone, her totes adorbs Brooklynn accent that’s so much more pronounced than Kenny’s scratching through the speaker. He doesn’t talk to her that much, which sucks and they still haven’t been able to figure out why.

“I can’t be your fuckin’ middleman to our own Ma, K! D’you know how long it took her to speak to me again when she found out I  _ talked  _ to you?” Izzy sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. Jenny winces. “I can’t handle that again.”

Kenny drops his hat to the floor; Mandy kicks it through the air so it doesn’t land in the gross sticky spot where Nursey dropped a whole cup of beer last night and forgot to clean it up. (It’s a good thing he’s so pretty.)

His free hand now fisted in his hair, Kenny insists, “Squirt, I—you don’t have to like, ask her to talk to me okay? I just—I want her to know I miss her. I want her to know I’m—I’m—,”

Kenny chokes over the words and Izzy cuts in, “She doesn’t fucking ask about you! She doesn’t want to  _ know.  _ Look, K, I—it’s shit. It’s fuckin’ shit, but I can’t—she’s not ready. She’ll find you when she is.”

“What if she’s never ready?” Kenny whispers. His voice is hoarse like he was yelling. Jenny knows he wasn’t yelling.

There’s silence on the other line for so long that Jenny almost gives up and floats away. There are goosebumps on Kenny’s arms.

Finally, cold and quiet, Izzy tells him, “Then I hope you’re happy with your choices.”

The line clicks into static, unforgiving in the face of Kenny’s broken-off, “Don’t—” and the sound of his harsh breaths that are coming out in not-quite sobs. He tosses his phone onto the counter; it clatters harshly and Jenny jumps away from him in surprise. He doesn’t seem to notice the change.

_ ‘What happened?’  _ Mandy asks.

Jenny worries at her lip.  _ ‘Big fight with his sis, about his mom.’ _

Kenny braces an arm on the counter and presses his forehead against it, eyes squeezed shut and whole body shivering. His other hand turns into a fist. He slams it against the counter and flinches away when the pain hits.

_ “Fuck!”  _ he shouts, the loudest he’s been the whole time. He slams his fist against the counter again, harder. “Fuck,” he repeats, the softest.

_ ‘Oh, honey,’  _ Mandy whispers. Her eyes are swimming. When she blinks, fat tears roll down her cheeks and off her chin. They streak her mascara and evaporate when they hit the air. Mandy blinks again and her mascara shimmers back into place.

After the Accident, Jenny had thought things would start to hurt less, after a while. They’ve seen so many boys come and go, all with their own secrets, all with pain that no one but them and the walls gets to see. But it’s never the same. There’s never been a Jack, or a Kenny, or a Bitty, and there never will be again and it’ll always hurt to watch them break.

Eventually, Kenny pushes off the counter and grabs at his phone. He unlocks it and goes into his text messages and stares, for too long, at his conversation with Bitty.

Mandy smiles sadly; it’s been months and Bitty’s name is still saved with a heart next to it in the contacts list. Which is probably kinda pathetic, actually, but she can’t bring herself to think of Kenny that way. Even if she’s wanted to strangle him for most of the year.

Kenny’s hands are shaking. His thumbs slip over the keys while he tries to type out a message.

**_Kent (1:33 pm):_ ** _ Will you be home soon? _

He deletes it.

**_Kent (1:33 pm):_ ** _ Hey I really _

He deletes that one too.

**_Kent (1:34 pm):_ ** _ I need help _

Delete.

He puts the phone back down on the counter face-down and makes a defeated sound in his throat, something between a whimper and a sob. There’s a beat that fills Jenny with dread and then Kenny is leaning down, clumsily pulling at That cabinet until he manages to fling it open and fumbles around inside.

When he comes up, there’s a bottle of gross vodka in his hand and a haggard expression on his face. He doesn’t really so much place it on the counter as he lets it slip out of his grasp. It thunks against the veneer and Mandy is glad the bottle is plastic.

_ ‘What do we do?’  _ she asks Jenny, feeling a little frantic as Kenny moves to the top cabinets to find a shot glass. It’s only been, like, two weeks since Kenny promised Bitty that he wouldn’t drink anymore.

Jenny bites at her lip, looking between Kenny and the vodka. She reaches out and pushes the bottle away, a full foot from where he’d set it down.

Kenny puts a shot glass down on the counter. He blinks, stares at the place the bottle used to be, and scrubs a tired hand over his face. After a moment, he notices the bottle to his right and grabs at it, almost like he’s relieved. His hands are still shaking but his fingers are steady enough to work at unscrewing the cap.

_ ‘Jenny?’ _

Jenny feels conflicted, her own fingers twitching in sympathy with Kenny’s.  _ ‘Shitty always says people have to make decisions for themselves.’  _ Kenny starts to pour.

Mandy purses her lips together in distress. She can almost feel an ache in her chest and they can’t let Kenny do this, they  _ can’t.  _ Her nostrils flare and she decides,  _ ‘That’s bullshit.’ _

Lunging forward, Mandy smacks the shot glass away from Kenny’s waiting hand. Vodka sprays over the counter, onto his flannel shirt and the glass chips when it tumbles to the ground. Her empty lungs flutter like they want to be breathing hard and Jenny makes a hitched gasping sound from behind her.

It’s the only noise that anyone makes for what feels like a long time, Kenny watching the way the cracked glass rolls listlessly across the ground, mouth hanging open in silent shock. The glass bumps up against a chair leg and comes to a stop.

Mandy floats backwards to hover next to Jenny, who reaches out and grabs at her hand.

Kenny stares and stares and then he looks up right at them. His pale eyes are fixed, approximately, on Mandy’s left earlobe. They flicker with something nearly like recognition, the closest to Knowing anyone’s been in so long. It almost makes Mandy think she could be real.

“Thanks,” he tells Mandy’s hot pink earring, voice soft and shaking and as barely-there as either of them feels. His lips twitch like he wants to smile.

There’s no good answer to that, that they can think of, so the girls watch in silence as he re-caps the vodka and stashes it back in the cabinet. Methodically, he dampens a paper towel to wipe up the counter and then dries it with a washcloth that he hangs up on the oven handle when he’s done, folding it neatly, the way Bitty likes. He brushes his fingers over it for a moment and Jenny can’t remember what that would feel like, anymore.

Kenny turns to go, bending down to snag his hat off the floor. He stays crouched down there for a second in indecision, before he reaches out and grabs the shot glass. When he stands, he traces his thumb across the chipped lip, down the hairline crack that threatens the fact that the glass could shatter entirely.

“Thanks,” he says again, to no one in particular.

**Author's Note:**

> I have tons of thoughts about the Haus ghosts' role in a universe where Kent goes to Samwell! Chat with me about it [on Tumblr <3](http://yoursummerfrost.tumblr.com/)


End file.
